Abstract: UPDATED with new support bracket details. The Noctua NH-C14 is a big heatsink for sure, but remarkably by orienting the fans and aluminum fin stack in a top-down direction, Noctua keep the heatsinks' height to just 130mm. That's a far cry more compact than your typical 160mm tall tower heatsink, but that hasn't made the NH-C14 into a slouch.

The top and bottom 140mm NF-P14
fans spin at 1200-750RPM but it's best to keep the speeds matched.
Two 3-pin motherboard headers provide power, neither fan is PWM compliant. Looking
at the top of the Noctua NH-C14 heatsink with the fans removed you
can see two small open squares about half way up the fins stack
- these are for the screwdriver to pass through when installing the heatsink. The
aluminum fin stack is 140x137mm in size.

The Noctua NH-C14 heatsink stands 130mm tall, the
bulk of it elevated 66mm over the CPU socket for clearance (37mm including the bottom
fan). The six 6mm diameter copper heat pipes pass through the 140x38mm aluminum fins
in an asymmetrical pattern. Each nickel plated aluminum fin measures 0.4mm thick and is spaced
1.5mm apart. Note the wire fan clips securing the two fans. A portion of the fin
edges are given a saw-toothed profile.

The nickel plated copper base plate measures 40x38mm
in size. The copper base plate is 2mm to 5mm thick. The six 6mm
diameter copper heatpipes are soldered to copper base plate and aluminum fins
along their entire length. A steel support column (center) helps protect the heatpipes from
bending under the weight of the upper portion of this 1000 gram
heatsink.

Base Finish and Flatness

Flipping
a heatsink over to inspect the business end is often a simple indicator of
overall cooler quality. More practically speaking, a heatsink is in many ways
only as effective as the contact it makes with the processor - the flatter and
smoother the better. Base finish is one of the criteria that Frostytech measure
in the course of evaluating heatsinks, and it involves two distinct aspects.
Surface Finish is the first; this is calculated with the aid of Surface
Roughness Comparator that has a cross section of common machine surface finishes
and their numerical surface roughness equivalents in microinches. The second is
Surface Flatness. This is tested with an engineers straight edge or proven flat
surface, in two axis.

The Noctua NH-C14 heatsink has a machined nickel-plated copper base with a surface roughness of approximately ~16 microinches, which is considered very good. The base plate is machined flat in both axis and very smooth. There is a
slight ridged texture from the machining process.

Next up, let's see how this heatsink handles the heat
compared to a selection of other heatsinks!